进化:从孤胆极客到高效团队

Every week we bring you a snapshot of the week in Geek History. This week we’re taking a peek at the public release of Gmail, the first time a computer won against a chess champion, and the birth of prolific inventor Thomas Edison.

每周我们都会为您提供Geek History中本周的快照。本周，我们将窥视Gmail的公开发布，这是计算机首次击败国际象棋冠军，也是多产的发明家托马斯·爱迪生(Thomas Edison)的诞生。

Gmail公开 (Gmail Goes Public)

It’s hard to believe that Gmail has only been around for seven years and that for the first three years of its life it was invite only. In 2007 Gmail dropped the invite only requirement (although they would hold onto the “beta” tag for another two years) and opened its doors for anyone to grab a username @gmail. For what seemed like an entire epoch in internet history Gmail had the slickest web-based email around with constant innovations and features rolling out from Gmail Labs. Only in the last year or so have major overhauls at competitors like Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail brought other services up to speed. Can’t stand reading a Week in Geek History entry without a random fact? Here you go: gmail.com was originally owned by the Garfield franchise and ran a service that delivered Garfield comics to your email inbox. No, we’re not kidding.

很难相信Gmail 才问世了7年，而在生命的前三年中，它只是受邀而已。在2007年，Gmail取消了仅邀请的条件(尽管它们将保留“ beta”标签另外两年)，并为所有人获取用户名@gmail敞开了大门。在互联网历史上似乎是一个完整的时代，Gmail拥有最流畅的基于Web的电子邮件，并且不断进行创新，并且功能从Gmail实验室推出。仅在去年左右，Hotmail和Yahoo!等竞争对手才进行了重大改革。邮件加快了其他服务的速度。没有一个随机的事实就无法忍受阅读《极客历史》中的“一周”吗？在这里，您可以找到：gmail.com最初是Garfield连锁店的所有者，并且运行了一项将Garfield漫画发送到您的电子邮件收件箱的服务。不，我们不是在开玩笑。

深蓝证明自己是国际象棋大师 (Deep Blue Proves Itself a Chess Master)

Deep Blue was a super computer constructed by IBM with the sole purpose of winning chess matches. In 2011 with the all seeing eye of Google and the amazing computational abilities of engines like Wolfram Alpha we simply take powerful computers immersed in our daily lives for granted. The 1996 match against reigning world chest champion Garry Kasparov where in Deep Blue held its own, but ultimately lost, in a 4-2 match shook a lot of people up. What did it mean if something that was considered such an elegant and quintessentially human endeavor such as chess was so easy for a machine? A series of upgrades helped Deep Blue outright win a match against Kasparov in 1997 (seen in the photo above). After the win Deep Blue was retired and disassembled. Parts of Deep Blue are housed in the National Museum of History and the Computer History Museum.

Deep Blue是 IBM制造的超级计算机，其唯一目的是赢得国际象棋比赛。在2011年，借助Google的全知之力以及Wolfram Alpha之类的引擎惊人的计算能力，我们仅仅将功能强大的计算机浸入我们的日常生活中是理所当然的。 1996年与统治世界的胸部冠军加里·卡斯帕罗夫(Garry Kasparov)的比赛在深蓝中举行了自己的比赛，但最终以4比2的失败输掉了很多人。如果像国际象棋这样被人们认为如此优雅而典型的人类努力对机器如此简单，那意味着什么呢？一系列升级帮助Deep Blue在1997年彻底击败了Kasparov赢得了比赛(如上图所示)。获胜后，Deep Blue退役并拆卸。深蓝的一部分位于国家历史博物馆和计算机历史博物馆中。

托马斯·爱迪生的诞生 (Birth of Thomas Edison)

Thomas Alva Edison was one of the most prolific inventors in history and holds an astounding 1,093 US Patents. He is responsible for outright inventing or greatly refining major innovations in the history of world culture including the phonograph, the movie camera, the carbon microphone used in nearly every telephone well into the 1980s, batteries for electric cars (a notion we’d take over a century to take seriously), voting machines, and of course his enormous contribution to electric distribution systems. Despite the role of scientist and inventor being largely unglamorous, Thomas Edison and his tumultuous relationship with fellow inventor Nikola Tesla have been fodder for everything from books, to comics, to movies, and video games.

托马斯·阿尔瓦·爱迪生 ( Thomas Alva Edison)是历史上最多产的发明家之一，拥有惊人的1,093项美国专利。他负责彻底发明或完善世界文化史上的重大创新，包括留声机，电影摄影机，1980年代几乎每部电话使用的碳纤维麦克风，电动汽车电池(我们将接管这一观念)一个认真对待的世纪)，投票机，当然还有他对配电系统的巨大贡献。尽管科学家和发明家的角色大体上不光彩，但托马斯·爱迪生(Thomas Edison)以及他与发明家尼古拉·特斯拉(Nikola Tesla)的混乱关系一直困扰着从书籍，漫画，电影和视频游戏等各个方面。

Other Notable Moments from This Week in Geek History

极客历史上本周其他值得注意的时刻

Although we only shine the spotlight on three interesting facts a week in our Geek History column, that doesn’t mean we don’t have space to highlight a few more in passing. This week in Geek History:

尽管我们每周在《极客历史》专栏中仅关注三个有趣的事实，但这并不意味着我们没有足够的空间来强调更多的动态。本周极客历史：

1971 – Apollo 14 returns to Earth after third Lunar mission.
1971年–阿波罗14号在执行第三次月球任务后返回地球。
1974 – Birth of Robot Chicken creator Seth Green.
1974年-机器人鸡创造者塞思·格林(Seth Green)出生。
1986 – Death of Dune creator Frank Herbert. Goodnight Dune.
1986年-沙丘创作者Frank Herbert逝世。晚安沙丘。
1997 – Simpsons becomes longest running animated show on television.
1997年-辛普森一家成为电视上播放时间最长的动画节目。

Have an interesting bit of geek trivia to share? Shoot us an email to

有一些有趣的怪胎琐事可以分享吗？向我们发送电子邮件至 tips@howtogeek.com with “history” in the subject line and we’ll be sure to add it to our list of trivia. tips@howtogeek.com ，主题行中包含“历史记录”，我们将确保将其添加到琐事列表中。